Essay 2: The quality of Social Media

Personally, social media is not an issue of quality to me as a user because whether an effective quality control mechanism should be set up towards any means of social media should be the concern and responsibility of the companies behind the scenes, but not of the users. If you ask any user of social media whether a quality control mechanism should be built up under the anarchy of internet, you are most likely to get an answer with “Yes”. However, how should it be built and who are responsible for it would probably appear to be vague in most people’s mind.

In my opinion, building up such a mechanism should fall into the responsibility of the companies, which are employing social media in their business. I have two reasons supporting this. No. One: both the users and the company agree that ensuring the quality of web content is necessary. No. Two: building up such a mechanism is vital to the success of the business run by the company in concern. On the side of users, it is expected that they could behave in a self-regulating manners. However, nothing on this side is obligatory and compulsory. On the side of the companies, winning the users equals winning the business, and this is just simple market regularity that every player must follow. In a rather fierce competitive market, users possess more bargaining power and have more options that they could possibly choose. Under this circumstance, low quality stuff is bound to be eliminated and be knocked out of the game. This gives any player in the game some indication that if they want to secure their position in the market, they have to do something to bring up stuff up to the accepted standard. Looking at the real examples in reality, both Slashdot and Wikipedia have adopted effective way of ensuring the quality of content published on their website, and this is also partly why they can stand at a higher position than their rival.

Another question would be “Do we need to involve the users’ participation in the quality control mechanism”. My answer would be it is not necessary, but it would be better if we can. As mentioned previously, it is the responsibility of the companies to build up a quality control mechanism. However, this doesn’t mean that users cannot participate in the censoring process. When comparing to the traditional media, new media is much more interactive. To a large extent, it changes the role of users in the whole value chain. Instead of just viewing the content, users are given the chance to create content. Similarly, instead of being censored, they can also participate into the censoring process. By doing so, not only can the company in concern benefit financially, but also the users will obtain a sense of value creation and be motivated at the same time.

To sum up, due to the fact that users of social media indeed have more and more options to choose in the more and more competitive market, companies should try whatever it takes to ensure the quality of the content on their website in order to stand at a higher position than their rivals. That is to say an effective quality control mechanism needs to be built up, and under the mechanism, user participation should be also encouraged since it is mutually beneficial.

Essay 1 - SMT and I

Usually I use SMT to stay in touch with friends, stay updated in the technical sphere, take advantage of other people’s mistake, and more than often to discuss topics that I’m interested in.

One of the technologies, or rather a community, I usually use is Facebook. Facebook can be seen as a common platform for communication throughout the globe, while keeping the advantages of regional communities. By that I mean that Facebook is divided into different regions and by belonging to different regions, you automatically get access to more information about other members. For example, I can access more information about a person belonging to the “Swedish Network”, while being member myself, than a person belonging to the “Norwegian Network”.

I can arrange my friends into different groups and also decide what kind of information about me each group should be allowed to access. In my belief, this is a very important possibility nowadays. I have friends which may access all information about me and then I have acquaintances that I would like to hide some information from.

The group of people I know and socially engage with are very particular with who everyone is friend with and especially not friends with. By going through my friend list and not finding a particular person that I’m supposed to know, my friends often assume that I have some kind of dispute with that person. This is starting to happen more than often know. Thus it is important to have your friend list as complete as possible, just to avoid conflicts.

The biggest difference between these kinds of SMTs and the usual emailing contact is the simple interface. I can easily share photos, links, YouTube-movies and other “stuff” with many people at a time. I also give them a possibility to interact with what I’ve sent by simply writing a comment. By this way my friends that aren’t each other’s friend can find each other. This adds a whole new dimension to the simple emailing ritual.

I also think that SMT’s like Facebook encourage people to communicate through short but often messaging. The possibility to comment on almost everything that another person exposes on Facebook is an interesting prospect. I could, for example write that I’m going to attend the SMT-course next semester on my status bar. That will be seen by all of my friends and friends that were considering taking this course would now have another reason to either join or avoid this courseJ. They then, first of all get the information that I’m taking this course, but can also communicate back to me easily by commenting on my status.

Another huge amount of my free time goes to searching and learning about new things, especially about flash developing. By scanning different forums I get advice from user that have had or are having the same problem or question as me.

I also use different social media solutions to discuss and share music I have produced myself. Though that is one of my biggest hobbies, it is fun to get feedback on my work. I see music forums as an interesting place for musicians to meet, criticize and discuss each other’s work.

Different blogs can also be very useful while looking for information. Blogs can be more interesting than forums if I’m looking for a solution for a specific problem and would also like tips on how I can avoid other mistakes involving the same problem area. They are quite many blogs that are updated regularly and consist of accurate and pedagogical information. These are then often sponsored by bigger companies related to the subject of the blog.

One technology that drastically has changed my way of studying is Google Docs. I don’t really know if that can be considered as a Social Media Technology, but I would like to believe so. Google Docs helps me easily share my documents, spreadsheet and presentation with others. They can then tribute to my document by editing it and I always know who has changed what because of the revision history built in Google Docs. This is especially useful while working in projects.

I believe that SMT is a very important part of my everyday life. I could live without it, but I would rather not. An urge to always know what other people are doing and if they have contacted me is one of the reasons I would like to have SMTs present in my everyday life. Thus, SMTs works as a tool for me to stay in touch with my friends (social aspect), find new information and revise already learned knowledge (educational aspect) and even share and develop new ideas (entrepreneur aspect).

Essay 1 - will parallel information eventually lead to the termination of individuality (Tanda)

In the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Antinomies emerge when empirical reason cannot play the role of establishing rational truths because it goes beyond possible experience and is applied to the sphere of that which transcends it. Four antinomies were proposed in “Kritik der reinen Vernunft”:
1. The limitation of the universe in respect of space and time,
2. The theory that the whole consists of indivisible atoms
3. The problem of freedom in relation to universal causality
4. The existence of a necessary being
As a media student, when I study the social media theories I found a paradox which also cannot be solved rationally: will parallel information eventually lead to the termination of individuality.
The termination of individuality can be plain depicted as in the movie "WALL•E", everyone receive the exactly same information at the exactly same time from the projection screen, even they are free individuals they would make exactly same choices and decision. However, in the course literature " The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom", the author argued that communication will still keep the individuality.

In my opinion, Postmodernism is a frame in which these antinomies could be discussed. Compared with the Dualism which defined mind and body as separated parts, postmodernism argues that the human beings should not be hold as information transferring system but the subject where coupling behavior between different systems happens.

Firstly, it insists uncertainty, de-centering of the subjects. With the point of view that all the truth is consisted by the language modeling reality in people’s minds, postmodernist believe that human beings are not the center of languages, it is the language that is in charge. However, uncertainty and differences exist in languages, even the significance is a result of differences, as a result, and there is no absolute truth, it is also logical to resign the chase of absolute truth.
Secondly, it question rationality, as all the technologies is developed with languages, uncertainty and limitation are the two main evidence with which postmodernist do not believe in rationality.
Finally, as the development of modern society, all the knowledge products also have become merchandise, knowledge are not gained by the training of minds anymore; they are acquired only by copying. As the transformation to an external one, the functions of knowledge also change: as the basis of domination of the society, authority lies behind all the forms of culture and social ties. When built the relationship with knowledge, authority will control by making use of knowledge, thus knowledge will not be objective or neutral, but only the outwards appearance of authority.

Essay 1: Life could be much easier with S. M. T.

By Tao Wang

Frankly speaking, I certainly do not belong to that group who never use social media technologies (S. M. T.) at all. As a matter of fact, I use them a lot. My social media experience started with the form of forum almost 10 years ago. Nowadays, there are many types of forums out there on the WWW. However, there are mainly two types of them attracting me most. The first type can be categorized as entertaining-based one, and the other can be called the problem-solving-based. I am not going to say I am a frequent visitor to the first type. However, I did go to these forums when I felt like needing a little break from the busy life as well as having some spare time. As for the second type, it can help you solve your practical problems effectively. For example, when I decided to come to Sweden for master study, my friend told me a very useful forum with the URL http://www.kina.cc/, which provided up-to-date information about studying in Sweden as well as other countries in the Scandinavian area. At that time, I did become a frequent visitor of that forum, and was aggressively searching information about Sweden and its schools.

My second contact with social media is blog. My blog is like a portal of myself to my friends and family, with whom I got less chance meeting, especially when I am abroad. On my blog, I usually posted a lot of pictures I took at that time. That means my friends and family can actually know where I am and what I am doing. At the same time, I also visit my friends’ blog to see what they are doing and how they are living their wonderful lives.

My third contact with social media technology can be associated with one computer game I played. This game is called Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it can be played solely as well as on the internet or local LAN. There are a less number of people playing this game when comparing to games like WarCraft, mainly because it is a niche game. However, I liked it very much, and I also noticed that every real player of this game seemed really into it and quite loyal. We have forums regarding this game, which serve as a community where we can learn more about this game as well as a place where we can show how well we could play it, to a large extent, by posting the screen shots. Moreover, some people are organizing activities for the game fans, who are geographically close, in the real life. These activities include a party in a restaurant, which everyone knows, a field trip to a nearby airport to photographing the landing and taking off of the airplanes, a visit to some local airports where short-term real flight training is provided, etc.

My other contacts with social media consist of YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and miniclip. Each one of them solves me a lot of problems accordingly, and I found them quite useful and easy to use as well. Generally speaking, social media technologies help me live my life much easier and I cannot imagine my life without them. Since social media technologies are widely used now, more and more problems associated with them are appearing as well, such as irresponsible posts on the forum, unacceptable video clips on the YouTube, etc. However, more regulatory system are being built, and I strongly believe that all these currently existing problems will be solved sooner or later by the effective regulating on the web. Thus, I look at social media technologies and their consequences with great hope, and I definitely believe that their future is going to be brighter and brighter.

Essay 1: Never being regular (by Fredrik)

First time I was introduced to online communities I was about eleven years old. My family owned a PC which was mostly used by me and my six year older brother. Rather than using, we were of course playing with it. My brother to tried connecting to a BBS to get more games, apps and mod-music. I didn't understand much at first, he had received the personal invitation from a school friend and the interface was command based. But then, when he tried out the new graphical BBS hosted by some staff of a major Swedish tabloid, I also found a way to experience e-mail, chatting, file-sharing and discussion. I enjoyed it for a few years, in the end overlapping with an introducing internet-connection. It was a private and regulated community, and though accessible through the internet, it had built-in limitations. One could argue that the BBS was not an online community as we refer to them today. Actually, a classmate at that time argued with me that internet was overall superior to this BBS. By now I realize he was really bright to see that there was no future for the BBS. For me it was the community that counted though, and when it eventually closed down I was at a loss.

Since then, I was always looking back and wondering: “What good is today's internet socially?”. Regardless it was online gaming, homepage making or music sharing, I found myself socializing as secondary to the activity. Usually it didn't seems so strange, because I had such a diversity of activities going on. So I rarely had a chance to become regular. IRC and MUD were a bit difficult to get into and instant messaging was an activity limited to keeping in touch with classmates and occasionally some random foreigner.

There were times when I though “maybe this is what my internet community will be like”. By the year of 2000 I was a teenager and regular at the major Swedish community site. This kind of site made it a lot easier to stick to some small topics and expand one's own network, sometimes through existing friends.

However, those small topics were usually discussed somewhere else, and soon this site become out of fashion. The lesson learned out of this was that communities that I associated with a certain site are transcient (though the site remains). Fortunately, it motivated me to look and see what other kinds of communities were out there. On the negative, I became reluctant to investing time and interest just for the sake of becoming member of one internet community. The only thing that kept me interested was the emerging subculture.

When new subcultures were turning physical, I experienced it was socially more authentic, thus taking less part in the online community. Blogs were formed, making it possible for me to keep up with lots of people and the events around them. I was eagerly expanding my network offline, but not everyone I met had a similar attitude to the network. There were a few conflicts with those who remained and prefered being mainly active in the online community. And, there was confusion in using handle names. In some situations I was even regarded as complete stranger, while others admitted some mutual enthusiasm.

Among those who were more into the offline network on the other hand, interesting stories were shared. For example about how we picked up this or that interest which had originally sprung from one the same subculture on the internet. No one had ever imagined how large and diverse the online networks had become. If everyone were doing like me, the growth would have been slower I think. In this context, non-deterministic development seems obvious (and supported by Benkler 2006).

I can see another perspective of what happened as through social rules of the blogs and comments. After all, it is pretty easy to distiguish fellow bloggers from the lurkers. But it's not just a matter of being somebody's best friend or another stranger. I believe it makes a difference for what kind of ties you'd expect. In this regard, it's easier for me to understand my social benefits of the internet community.

Upon the whole, the truly social aspects of internet are not as important for me as the new possibilities of developing special interests are. Maybe they once were, as for everyone who have their first encounter with social media, and enjoy a form of escapism. Those media that offer an entirely new role and context and possibly worth sticking to rather than “real life”. But seeing a subculture grow from nothing to becoming more popular that popular culture, I think there are higher issues at stake here.

Rasmus: How I Use Social Media Technologies

Social Media to Keep in Touch With Friends and Family
To keep in touch with friends and family I use two different instant messaging programs, built into the same client, and one web community. The instant messaging program MSN Messenger is the program I use the most since it is the most used protocol by my friends. I do have very many friends in my contact list within MSN Messenger but there is only a few of them that I talk to every day. It is with help of MSN Messenger I do the communication when both I and my friend are online.

I also use Google Talk like some of my friends. My main reason for using Google Talk is that it works thru Google Mail which is not blocked by my work but MSN Messenger is. Since my parents and my brother also use Google Mail I can keep in contact with them thru Google Talk when I want to chat with them.

The web community I am using is Facebook. Almost all of my friends do have an account on Facebook and therefore it is an easy way to keep in touch with them without physical interaction. I use Facebook almost everyday but rarely for regular communication. My main use with Facebook is to look at pictures other friends have taken from events I participated in. I also use it to retrieve and send invites to other upcoming events. Without Facebook would I probably miss a lot of invites to nice events and great parties and miss a lot of my friends’ pictures of events.

Social Media to Learn More about Things That Interest Me
I do follow multiple blog pages and news sites about things that interest me but I usually don’t go to the page itself but I do use the aggregator Google Reader which can be described as a web based RSS feed reader. Google Reader makes it easy to collect information about news, rumours and facts about things that may interest me. Google Reader can also suggest new RSS feeds based of which feeds I subscribe to and if I want to share some interesting news item I can post it directly to a blog or email it to likeminded friends.

Social Media to Discuss Topics That Interest Me
In most cases I don’t become involved in discussions in a social media about subjects that interest me but in the few cases where I actually do it I use some web forum.

Social Media in My Studies
There is very few social media technologies in my studies. In some of my courses the course has a page in the social tool Ping Pong but it is very rarely this tool is used in a way that can be called social; often it only is communication in one way, from the teacher to the students.

What Social Media Technologies Mean to Me
Social media technologies are a great part of my daily life and almost every day I use social media technologies. For me it is both a way of spending time I don’t have and a way to entertain myself when I’m in boring situations, for example during a slow day at work.

Welcome to group 2 of SocMed08

Hello everybody and welcome to the blog Mosaic Ideal!

The main topic here is Social Media and we will have the following authors:

Fredrik B

Rasmus B

Tanda S

Tao W

edit: Hassan is joining the group too